In Pierce County, initial election results show Joe Biden leading Bernie Sanders
Former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders were battling it out for Washington state in Tuesday night’s results.
A similar story also was playing out in Pierce County, where Biden was ahead 36,764 votes (35.96 percent) to Sanders’ 32,615 (31.9 percent) after the initial count was released shortly after 8 p.m.
Turnout was 31.70 percent for the county, with 544 precincts out of 555 reported.
On Tuesday the state still offered a ballot of 13 Democrats, with just three still in the Washington primary race one week after Super Tuesday: Biden, Sanders and Sen. Tulsi Gabbard.
On the Republican side, President Donald Trump got 98.52 percent of the results in Pierce County, with 1.48 percent going to write-ins.
Statewide, Trump received 99.13 percent of the vote, with .87 percent write-ins.
Biden has enjoyed a campaign resurgence starting with his South Carolina victory, then a great gains in Super Tuesday states after billionaire Tom Steyer, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar suspended their campaigns.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar later endorsed Biden.
He’s also won endorsements from former competitors Sens. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker and Beto O’Rourke, along with billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who had been endorsed by Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodards.
In recent days, she had endorsed Biden, along with more than 50 U.S. mayors who once backed Bloomberg.
In Washington state, former Gov. Gary Locke also offered an early endorsement to Biden.
Sanders, who overwhelmingly won Washington’s caucus in 2016 when he ran against Hillary Clinton, worked to capitalize on his popularity in the state, capping it with a huge rally in February at the Tacoma Dome, drawing not only celebrities but more than 17,000 attendees to cheer him on.
Sanders won prominent endorsements from UFCW 21, a slate of women of color leaders in the state, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others.
Gabbard told ABC News in March she was staying in the race because it was “an opportunity to speak to Americans every single day about the sea change we need in our foreign policy.”
Washington State Democrats said in an advisory issued March 4 that “we will not release any delegate allocation numbers until the election results are certified by the Secretary of State.”
“Since 58 of our 89 pledged delegates are distributed according to these results, declaring any candidate the ‘winner’ or the recipient of the ‘majority of delegates’ prior to having congressional district results would be inaccurate.”
There already were concerns that since voting started Feb. 19, “it is possible that several candidates who have since suspended their campaigns will receive significant numbers of votes. If any of these candidates receive enough votes to be awarded delegates, those delegates remain pledged to that candidate regardless of the fact that they have suspended their campaign.”
Well before Super Tuesday, several of the Democratic candidates in the running had already dropped out.
After Super Tuesday, Bloomberg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren also joined the ranks of those out of the race.
Warren and Buttigieg, in particular, had garnered a fair number of supporters in Washington state, both drawing sizable audiences to their rallies. Buttigieg also made multiple fundraising swings through the state.
Among the other candidates, Bloomberg received 12.19 percent of the vote in Pierce County, Warren received 9.53 percent, Buttigieg received 5.44 percent, Klobuchar 2.32 percent.
The rest each registered below 1 percent.
“It is also possible that a significant number of voters were holding their ballots until after Super Tuesday results became known, and we have no way to predict how —if at all — this dynamic will affect the decisions of voters returning their ballots later in the voting period,” Washington State Democrats said in its March 4 announcement.
They also expressed concerns regarding challenged ballots.
“In the scenario where a candidate is close to making the 15 percent viability threshold to receive delegates (either statewide or in a particular congressional district), that campaign will have the option to ‘cure ballots’ by following up with voters whose ballots were challenged for any reason to get those ballots cured and counted.
“Because we’ve already seen reports of thousands of voters failing to check a box to meet the requirement of certifying that they are only participating in one political party’s nomination process this year which would result in those ballots being challenged, it is possible there will be enough of these challenged ballots to change the outcome of whether candidates are viable in specific congressional districts and possibly statewide.”
